Sargasso

Luminato Festival

Toronto, Canada - 2011

Commissoned by the Luminato festival, Sargasso
refers to the vast, tangled floating masses of living
matter and cast-off material that drifts at the centre
of the Atlantic. The environment within the sweeping
atrium of the Santiago Caltrava's Allen Lambert Galleria
made a canopy that slowly shifted and floated above the
city. The canopy formed a forest-like hovering field,
kin to primitive life-forms within dense jungles and
ocean reefs.

The outer canopy layer was formed from a hexagonal
meshwork of acrylic and mylar fronds that stretched east
and west into the heights of the public hall. This surface
met the ground at the centre of the installation. The
sloping and curving membrane framed a pool of space that
functioned as an open room for public gathering. An inner
canopy layer was suspended over this central area, containing
an aerial grotto of kinetic bladders and glasswork.

In this expanded aerial soil, embedded machine intelligence
triggered breathing and swallowing motions, accompanied
by waves of overlapping faint recorded voices housed
within an array of embedded miniature speakers. Empathic
motions rippled out from hives of kinetic valves and pores,
creating a diffuse pumping that pulled moist air and
stray organic matter through the filtering membranes.
Glands containing synthetic digestive liquids and salts
were clustered throughout the system. Engineered protocells,
which are liquid-supported artificial cells that share
some of the characteristics of natural living cells, were
arranged in a series of embedded flasks.